


Red and Black - Alternate

by Velvedere



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Kiss, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Making Out, No So Creative Interpretation of the Sith Code, of an Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 16:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8063488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: This is what could have happened. (But this isn't what happened.) An alternate continuation of my Red and Black fic.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ballista](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ballista/gifts).



> This takes place after chapter one of Red and Black.

Eventually, Ezra came back.

Again, Kanan didn’t know just how long it had been since his first visit. Hours blurred on one into the next in this place, and what few snatches of sleep he got in the interim were fitful and timeless.

He lifted his head again as the sound of boots drew near outside the door of his cell, and the locked entryway slid open, revealing a very familiar silhouette.

Ezra stepped down onto the floor’s metal grating. He didn’t have any guards with him.

“What is it this time?” Kanan croaked. His voice was dry. “Come to tell me your Darth name?”

Ezra wasn’t in a humorous mood. His mouth formed a hard line as he met Kanan’s eyes.

“If I found a way for us to get what’s inside the temple and get away before the Sith found out, would you do it?”

“What?” Kanan scowled, fighting to keep his neck lifted to where he could see him. The way his arms were bound to the wall behind him didn’t make it easy, pulling on his shoulders.

“Would you do it?” Ezra asked again, a tension in his stance.

Kanan eyed him warily, half suspecting a trick.

“Just leaving isn’t an option?” Kanan let his head droop and sighed when Ezra’s gaze didn’t flinch. “Then I guess so.”

Ezra let out the breath he’d been holding. He unclenched his hands, and stepped forward, moving in close.

“Good.”

He knelt, and pushed on the controls that would release Kanan’s bindings from the wall.

“Because I found a way.”

Kanan fell forward, his weight released. He grunted as his shoulders rotated back to a more natural positioning, winced at the release of muscles that had been too long held strained. Numbness and then a tingling sensation took over where he moved him limbs slowly, testing their integrity, before he made the attempt to get to his feet.

Ezra helped him, letting Kanan lean on him.

“That feels good.” Kanan brought his hands back around in front of him, pushing off the manacles once their energy seals deactivated. He rubbed his wrists, and turned his neck to one side, then the other, feeling it crack. “Now get this collar off.”

Ezra winced.

“…I can’t.” He gave Kanan his most pained look. “Raizorr set it to a code. I don’t know how to unlock it.”

Kanan rolled his eyes.

Of course he did.

“Great. A lot of help I’ll be.”

“You can help just fine without the Force. C’mon.” Ezra hurried back to the door, waving Kanan to follow. Kanan limped the first few steps before certainty came back to his feet.

“Thought those Sith always liked to do things in twos,” he gritted between his teeth.

“We’ll find a way around it. C’mon! We don’t have a lot of time.”

They slipped out into the Imperial compound. Taking the corridors one burst at a time between intersections, past the front guard Ezra mind tricked away, and from there on into the cave beyond. The Imperials had already set up a comfortable shop: floodlights illuminated most of the rocky landscape, and vehicles parked along the ravine were piled high with supplies that had yet to be unloaded. Beyond the black gash in the ground sat the Sith Temple, red and forbidding.

They cut across the ground, moving through shadows and behind the cover of tents and crates.

“I’d feel a lot better if I had my lightsaber,” Kanan growled as they went. “Or a blaster. Something!”

“If we do this right, we don’t need it,” Ezra whispered back harshly, eying the way. They would have to steal a speeder to get across the ravine.

“Do what right?” Kanan crouched just over his shoulder, looking along the same path. “You still haven’t told me what we’re doing.”

“I figured out a way into the temple that Raizorr doesn’t know about,” said Ezra, pointing toward the pyramid. “But I can’t do it by myself. If we can get in, we can get what we came for and get out of here before Raizorr knows we’re gone.”

“How about we just skip breaking into the big spooky temple dripping with centuries’ worth of evil?” Kanan exasperated. “What’s in there that could be so important?”

“Something that could turn this war around.”

Kanan raised an eyebrow as he looked down dubiously at Ezra over his shoulder. Even in profile, the staunch determination was plain on his face. In his voice: the conviction to do whatever was necessary. It was the same as it had always been when Ezra made his mind up about something.

And it worried Kanan now as much as it did then.

“You’re going to go whether I’m with you or not,” he said, not as an endorsement, but as a reiteration of fact.

“Pretty much, yeah,” answered Ezra.

Kanan sighed.

“Then I guess I’m going with you.”

Ezra glanced back at him, something of a smile easing the deadly severity in his face. There was appreciation there as well. Glad for Kanan’s understanding. Grateful for his trust.

“I just really wish we could get this collar off.” Kanan suppressed the urge to shudder. “I feel naked without the Force.”

“Naked. Really?”

“You know what I mean!”

*****

The noise of a speeder would have drawn too much attention. So they found a better solution: a barge the Imperials were using to float supplies and excavated material back and forth across the ravine. Currently it was unused, parked along the sheer rock wall on the compound side. Sneaking aboard and setting loose the controls, Kanan and Ezra drifted quietly across the abyss, and slipped off unnoticed on the other side.

They crouched low as they navigated the maze of jagged rocks to the temple’s front steps. A trick of perspective made it difficult to gauge just how big the temple was until one stood at its base. But there it sat, carved from the bones of the planet itself, the size of a small mountain.

Kanan was glad for the collar if it meant he didn’t have to sense the dark side seeping out of the temple’s walls.

Rather than go up the main entrance, Ezra led the way around one side, climbing over piles of rubble and collapsed walls, to a smaller, less conspicuous entrance way that cut a tunnel deep into the side of the temple near its base.

Inside, it was dark. What minimal light filtered in didn’t make it past the first few steps. Ezra ignited his lightsaber and held it up as he led the way, Kanan moving cautiously behind.

The tunnel, barely a size that would allow a speeder to pass through, ended in a carved door.

Twisted faces and hideous visages of the past screamed silently out from the bleak stone, their faces captured forever in some Sith’s sick idea of decoration. Kanan made a face as the blue light of Ezra’s lightsaber cast deep shadows along the raised impressions, and focused on the runes carved alongside them instead.

“What does it say?” he asked, as Ezra ran his hand across them, clearing off layers of dust and dirt.

“It’s the Sith code,” said Ezra. “Raizorr taught me how to read it. It says—”

“Yeah. I don’t need to know what it says.” Kanan traced the door’s edge with his eyes. There was no sign of any break in the stone, and as far as he could tell there was no handle or locking mechanism. A lightsaber might be the only way through. “So what do we do?”

There, Ezra’s manner shifted. He lowered his eyes, and his lightsaber, holding it out and to one side away from him so it would still shed its light.

“Now,” he said, slowly, as if preparing himself. He turned partly towards Kanan before he raised his eyes again. “Kiss me.”

Kanan stared.

“…what.”

“Kiss me.” Ezra gestured to the runes on the door. Quick to justify himself. “I figured out how it works, Kanan! The runes react to different lines of the Sith code. The first line is about passion…that’s how to get the door open.”

“I’d ask you how you figured that out if I thought I could stand it,” Kanan growled, and found a guilty satisfaction in the way Ezra winced. Which he immediately regretted.

He rubbed his forehead, sighing.

“What makes you think that would even work?”

“Because I know you want to.” There, Ezra was unflinching, looking up to meet his eyes. “I know you’ve wanted to for a long time.”

Kanan opened his mouth to argue, and promptly shut it.

The look Ezra gave him suggested that trying to deny it would be pointless.

Kanan sagged instead, skipping denial and going right into remorse.

“We shouldn’t…” he started.

Ezra turned. Stepped towards him. Looking up from their difference in height – which was not as great a difference as it used to be…not as much as it was when they first met – without any hint of hesitation in his eyes or body. His entire manner spoke of his certainty.

“It’s the only way,” he said.

Kanan groaned. Pained and sickened and still not entirely certain this wasn’t some kind of trap. But Ezra already knew. Kanan had known for a long time, even if he’d tried to deny it. Hera probably knew too and just hadn’t decided to tell him yet, waiting to see if Kanan figured it out on his own. But it was there. It had been ever since Kanan first heard those words.

_I don’t want anyone else. I want you!_

He let out his breath, and shook his head. Realizing he was staring as debate still warred within him.

“Alright…alright!” He held up his hands, a steadying gesture meant for himself. “Okay. We’ll try it your way.”

Ezra had already moved in closer to him, almost comically expectant.

Kanan lowered his hands to his sides. He closed his hands into tight fists and kept them there as he leaned down, all but biting the inside of his cheek to bear the heavy sense of awkwardness about them.

Or maybe it was only around him. Ezra didn’t appear anything but his usual confident.

Kanan squeezed his eyes shut, and kissed him. One quick peck on the mouth.

Both their eyes snapped open and Ezra gave him a look that reminded Kanan of Hera in those times early on their partnership when he’d forgotten to do some chore around the ship.

“Like you mean it,” said Ezra.

Kanan drew the breath to protest, but Ezra silenced him. One step to close the distance between them, and he caught Kanan’s mouth with his own, reaching up his free hand to cup his neck and pull him down. To hold him there for the initial jerk-back reaction that reeled through Kanan’s system. The part of him that screamed _no, wrong!_ before that too was silenced by something else. A slide of Ezra’s tongue against his lips.

Then his eyes fell closed and a sense like dizziness swept him up as his hand touched Ezra’s hair. He curled his fingers and gripped only a little as he parted his mouth wider, a deep groan slipping its escape, with it loosening the tight hold of restriction he’d long held on a desire rooted deep down. Something he’d wanted to bury even from himself. Now, slipped loose, it curled a pleasant warmth through his belly. Made him forget how to breathe.

Ezra tasted like fresh jogun fruit.

If it weren’t for the collar, if he still felt the presence of the Force, Kanan might have noticed the way several of the runes flared a deep red upon the door. He might have sensed what Ezra planned to do next.

Ezra’s hand slid down his chest, fingers curling in to the tunic over Kanan’s chest.

With one pulse of the Force, Ezra threw him back against the door. The breath left Kanan’s chest in one quick rush and Ezra held him there, stepping slowly forward.

“What’re you—?” Kanan started to ask. Ezra grabbed hold of his jaw in one hand and held him for another kiss. Rougher. Possessive.

Kanan felt something jerk to life down below his belt.

“It’s not enough,” Ezra whispered, pulling away but not letting go. In the dark Kanan saw the glint of light in his eyes: blue from the blade tinged with the red of the runes, highlighting both best and worst parts of him. “There has to be more.”

“You don’t have to hold me down for that,” Kanan rasped, finding it increasingly difficult to think. He tried to pull his hand up from the wall but Ezra held it there through sheer will alone.

“But you like it,” he answered, straightforward simplicity and the beginnings of a knowing mischief in his eyes.

Kanan swallowed, a tiny hitch in the back of his throat.

He couldn't argue without lying.

Ezra moved in, and let his lightsaber drop to the ground to free up the use of his hand. The blade of it deactivated, enclosing them in dark, the length of the tunnel sufficient enough to conceal the sounds that would follow.


End file.
